Map - Maluku (province) (Provinsi Maluku)

Maluku is a province of Indonesia. It comprises the central and southern regions of the Maluku Islands. The main city and capital of Maluku province is Ambon on the small Ambon Island. The land area is 62,946 km2, and the total population of this province at the 2010 census was 1,533,506 people, rising to 1,848,923 at the 2020 Census. The official estimate as at mid 2021 was 1,862,626. Maluku is located in Eastern Indonesia. It is directly adjacent to North Maluku and West Papua in the north, Central Sulawesi, and Southeast Sulawesi in the west, Banda Sea, East Timor and East Nusa Tenggara in the south and Arafura Sea and Papua in the east.

Maluku has two main religions, namely Islam which at the 2020 Census was adhered to by 52.85% of the population of the province and Christianity which is embraced by 46.3% (39.4% Protestantism and 7.0% Catholicism).

All the Maluku Islands were part of a single province from 1950 until 1999. In 1999, the northern part of Maluku (then comprising the Maluku Utara Regency, the Halmahera Tengah Regency and the City of Ternate) were split off to form a separate province of North Maluku (Maluku Utara).

Historically, the term Maluku referred to the four royal centers in North Maluku, namely Ternate, Tidore, Bacan and Jailolo. A type of confederation consisting of the four kingdoms, which most likely emerged in the 14th century, was called Moloku Kie Raha or "The Four Mountains of Maluku". Although the four kingdoms subsequently expanded and covered the entire North Maluku region (as now defined) and parts of Sulawesi and New Guinea, the area of expansion was originally not included in the term Maluku. This only referred to the four main clove-producing islands to the west of Halmahera: Ternate, Tidore. Moti and Makian. Bacan further to the south, and Jailolo on Halmahera, were also commonly included in Maluku Proper, the four kingdoms forming a ritual quadripartition with connotations to local cosmology.

The etymology of the word Maluku is not very clear, and it has been a matter of debate for many experts. The first recorded word that can be identified with Maluku comes from Nagarakretagama, an Old Javanese eulogy of 1365. Canto 14 stanza 5 mentioned Maloko, which Pigeaud identified with Ternate or Moluccas. A theory holds that the name Maluku comes from the concept of "Maluku Kie Raha". "Raha" means four, while "kie" here means mountain, referring to 4 mountains of Ternate, Tidore, Bacan, and Jailolo (Halmahera), which have their own kolano (title for local kings). Therefore, the Maluku can come from: "Moloku" here meaning to grasp or hold. In this context, the meaning of "Moloku Kie Raha" is "the confederation of four mountains". However, the root word "loku" comes from local Malay creole word for a unit, therefore not from an indigenous language. The other possibility is that the word "Maloko" is a combination of "Ma", meaning "support" and "Loko" referring to the area. The phrase "Maloko Kie Raha" means "the place/world which has four mountains".